Anne peeked out the window of her suburban home in Parkfield, Manor Township.

A couple of guys in polo shirts were walking down the street, hawking glass-cleaning products.

Were the men legit?

She had no idea.

They unnerved her when they rang doorbells and sprayed the cleaner on people's windows as a demonstration.

"They talk very quickly and it just makes you uncomfortable," said "Anne," who was frightened enough to ask that her real name not be published.

The incident happened last summer, a peak period for door-to-door sales.

But soliciting spans all seasons, say police and consumer groups who try to weed the honest vendors from the fly-by-nights.

On Nov. 12, for example, police in Lititz arrested three York County men –– Travis L. Wyble, 39; Robert E. Wiley, 19; and Matthew Blimline, 23 –– for pitching carpet-cleaning services without permits.

For-profit traveling vendors in Lancaster and most of its suburbs are supposed to check in with police or obtain permits before they rap on your door.

Over the years, many have not.

Some vendors are themselves trapped in dead-end jobs pushing magazines for a few dollars a day, said Reid Maki, who coordinates the Child Labor Coalition at the National Consumers League in Washington, D.C.

He keeps a file of on-the-road horror stories, including fatal accidents and violent assaults on –– and by –– traveling sales vendors.

At the least, he said, that magazine subscription you sign up for is suspect.

If you don't know personally or can't easily identify the home or school of the person ringing your doorbell, he added, the odds you'll never lay eyes on your purchase "go way up."

It's wisdom Anne has taken to heart.

So has her husband, who she says fended off a man peddling meat out of an unmarked Maryland truck a few months ago.

"You've got to be kidding me!" was Anne's reaction.

"Who drives to a different state to sell meat? There's red flags all over that."

Wham, bam, scam?
Illegal peddling reports crop up here consistently, if not in great numbers.

The problem "comes and goes," said Officer Chris Armato of Lititz Borough police.

Officers in Lititz so far in 2011 wrote up the three citations noted above, according to police Chief William Seace, who said violators can be fined up to $300.

Manheim Township handed out two citations, Sgt. Thomas Rudzinski said.

West Lampeter Township officers issued none, according to Chief James Walsh.

Exact numbers were unavailable for Lancaster city and Manor Township.

East Hempfield Township has no ordinance, police Chief Stephen Skiles said.

Police officers in communities with ordinances typically let off first-time violators with a warning.

Police chiefs say most of the people who are stopped either get a permit or pack up and leave.

Lititz typically approves 10 to 15 permits a year, Seace said.

West Lampeter Township issued seven permits in 2011, an average number, according to Walsh.

Permit stipulations vary. In Lititz, for example, the documents must be approved by the mayor.

Lancaster charges $100 to issue a license; police run a criminal background check first.

Licensed insurance agents and farmers selling fresh fruit and vegetables are not covered by the ordinance in Manor Township, where convicted violators can be fined up to $600 and sentenced to up to 90 days in jail.

People tucking flyers in doors and nonprofits, such as Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, are generally exempt.

So are businesses that take orders or make previous appointments to visit customers, Rudzinski said.

"It's the ones that show up door-to-door unannounced" that are illegal, he said.

Such as young, high-pressure magazine vendors working for independent subscription companies.

The vendors typically drive out-of-state cars, or a van will drop them off to canvas a neighborhood, Rudzinski said, noting:

"They'll give you the line" that they're selling stuff to help pay for school.

Ron Atwell, who lives in the Manor Oaks development in Manor Township, has heard such spiels.

"I was on my front porch after supper one night and a young man pulled up in his car" with Michigan license plates, Atwell said.

The man said he was scouting a sales route for "high-end" meats but could provide no literature or other information about his company, Atwell said.

Atwell told him he needed a permit. "With that," Atwell said, "he walked down the street and crossed to the other side."

Atwell, a former cop and sheriff in Lehigh County, said he spotted the same car in a nearby community the next day.

Two more groups of peddlers materialized in the following weeks.

"When you have all these strange people floating around in your neighborhood it kind of makes you leery because you don't know if they're casing your house or what," Atwell said.

In 2010 and 2011, according to reports compiled by the Consumers League, three traveling magazine sales vendors were arrested for unrelated sexual assaults on customers in Connecticut, Florida and Nebraska.

Watchdog groups say bogus sales and exploitation of workers are the more common problems.

"We hear a lot that [consumers] don't always get the products they buy," Maki said.

Some companies operate "fairly legitimately," he said.

But others are scammers who leave a trail of changed names and disconnected phone numbers.

Kids frequently don't often get the attractive, exotic jobs they think they're applying for, Maki said.

Sales crew members have been murdered, raped and robbed.

"There's a lot of partying, hard drinking," according to Maki, who said he fielded a call last year from a boy abandoned by his crew along the road, 1,000 miles from home.

The boy was lucky.

"Sometimes when young people don't make their sales quota," Maki said, "they've gotten beaten up."

Websites such as travelingsalescrews.info –– launched by a man who lost his daughter in the wreck of a crew van –– are rife with tales of kids sucked into this shadow economy.

"It puts the consumer in a difficult dilemma" whether to help a kid going door-to-door, Maki said.

The safer bet is to pass, he added. For the family of a youth asking to go on the road, that's the only bet.

"Any responsible parent would say 'no.' "

Contact Sunday News staff writer Jon Rutter at jrutter@lnpnews.com.